Near-brawl breaks out at Garcia-Judah press conference

NEW YORK — The camps of Philadelphia’s RING, WBA and WBC junior welterweight Danny Garcia and his Feb. 9 opponent and ex-titleholder Zab Judah were involved in a near-brawl during Saturday’s 3 p.m. press conference at Gallagher’s Steak House promoting their clash at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

The father and trainer of Garcia (25-0, 16 knockouts), Angel Garcia, irritated Judah (42-7, 29 KOs) with comments about his career, promising that he would not last more than four or five rounds against his son.

The fighters were separated after nearly 10 minutes and calm was restored, after which Danny Garcia, Angel Garcia and Judah all conducted heated one-on-one interviews with media members.

“Zab is a four-round fighter,” said Angel Garcia, “and Danny’s going to knock him out in four rounds.”

Judah, who was sitting to the left of Garcia, then rose and stood next to the trainer, from whom he had to be separated by former undisputed middleweight champion and Golden Boy partner Bernard Hopkins.

“ICU doesn’t discriminate on any patients,” said Judah. “If you wanna find out, just keep f–king with me, you [N-word.]”

Both Garcia and Judah will be in attendance at New York’s Madison Square Garden for Saturday night’s WBA junior middleweight title defense by Austin Trout (25-0, 14 KOs) against four-time, three-division titlewinner Miguel Cotto (37-3, 30 KOs) on Showtime.

Garcia is coming off October’s fourth-round stoppage of Mexican four-division titlewinner Erik Morales in a rematch of his unanimous decision victory in March.

The victory over Morales followed Garcia’s equally sensational fourth-round technical knockout of Amir Khan in July, which added the RING and WBA belts to his collection.

Once the RING, WBA, WBC and IBF welterweight titleholder as well as the WBO and IBF junior welterweight beltholder, Judah was last in the ring in March, when he stopped previously undefeated Vernon Paris in the ninth round to rebound from a stoppage loss to Khan.

A Brooklyn native who was ringside for Garcia-Morales II, Judah will represent Garcia’s sixth consecutive bout against a current or former world titleholder following consecutive decisions over ex-beltholders Nate Campbell and Kendall Holt in April and October of last year, respectively.